The forum is replete with posters who harbour strong feelings about the EU, immigration and a whole host of related issues and who are not afraid to air them!

Those who would wish their view to be heard in an official capacity, have been given an opportunity to have their voice heard.

This country is to enact into domestic law, an EU Directive which calls for sanctions against employers who employ illegal immigrants. As with all EU Directives, the EU leaves it to member states to adopt the form and method it will use to enforce the polices set out by the institutions of the EU.

These are public consultations. Just what sanctions would you like to see imposed upon a defaulting employer employing illegals? Would you like to see written undertakings by them not to be naughty in the future if they are caught? Would you like to see an enforcement mechanism which imposes a fine on defaulting employers which are met from the Company's profit-margin and tax-deductible? Would you like to see a more draconian system of holding employers liable in their personal capacity for a breach of the criminal law? What enforcement mechanism would you like to see and so on and so on.

You do not need to be any kind of an expert to respond to such consultations. Such public consultations on EU matters are common I do them all the time! You do not need to have any particular expertise or be the brain of Britain, but if you want to respond on the link shown, you just have to follow the rules and say something practical and sensible.

For the serial complainers on message boards, now is the opportunity for you to say something sensible and perhaps influence the law.

And at the same time, UK is making the legal route much more difficult, complicated and expensive. Where are we going to get our doctors and nurses, or cleaners and strawberry pickers from then?

We've got loads of unemployed who've been priced out of the job market by far cheaper foreign alternatives - without these alternatives, business will either have to take the hit of employing UK subjects, pay the costs of legal immigration or go deeper underground for their cheap illegals. The alternative is go bust, IMHO.

And at the same time, UK is making the legal route much more difficult, complicated and expensive. Where are we going to get our doctors and nurses, or cleaners and strawberry pickers from then?

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I think the key word is 'illegal'

smartascarrots said:

We've got loads of unemployed who've been priced out of the job market by far cheaper foreign alternatives - without these alternatives, business will either have to take the hit of employing UK subjects, pay the costs of legal immigration or go deeper underground for their cheap illegals. The alternative is go bust, IMHO.

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Rubbish, we have a stack of bone-idle, dole scrounging wasters who can't be bothered to better themselves in any way, shape or form and are happiest when a) pissed b) on drugs c) pushing war veterans into the canal

Not for much longer, the UK has been freewheeling economically for over ten years with Brown racking up debt like a junkie with a stolen credit card. Crap transport, Policing and regulation coupled with very high taxes mean that Businesses are relocating elsewhere. The Days of surplus bountiful enough to bankroll over three million benifit addicts will soon be at an end.

Article 39 (formerly Art 4 of the EC Treaty provides for the free movement of workers throughout the Union and secondary legislation of which Directives form a part, provide for detailed rules governing the right of entry into the territory of the member states. Clearly, member states who employ illegals from outside of the Union exploit the clandestine nature of the illegal and his or her wish to avoid interaction with the authorities of the member states in which they illegally reside. This makes them commercially exploitable by paying them below the minimum wage and for employers to flout other rules such as Health and Safety and so on. The effect of such exploitation is to degrade the ability of EU citizens, including ourselves if we want to, to freely move and find work in any country within the Union or even, for that matter, to exercise social mobility within our own member state, thus, it would have a deleterious effect on low paid workers within a member state which defaults by employing illegal immigrant labour.

It is not just businesses such as the Canning and Fruit-Picking industry who flout the rules. It is the upwardly mobile who employ cleaners and domestic servants. You will recall, for example, the efforts of David Blunkett, who wanted to obtain a passport through the 'back door' for a domestic servant employed by a friend.

Thus, it is important, in my view, that whatever sanctions are introduced, as much for the protection of our own EU citizens as for others, that such sanctions should hurt a defaulting employer - preferably personally and that this country should not be allowed to produce an enforcement system that is so diluted as to become irrelevant, unworkable or unenforceable, riddled with exemptions, exceptions, provisos and qualifications that allow people like MP's Company Directors and others to avoid or evade them.

I realised the initial post was about illegals. My reply was intended to take into account the wider immigration context.

We're squeezing out illegal immigration at the same time as making the UK a less attractive place for legal migrants. The only people left to do the jobs that need doing will therefore be Brits, who demand higher wages as a result of our higher relative cost of living. To me, this means a lot of businesses will have to scale down or go bust to afford the wage bill.

As to the second point, yes there as plenty of second- ,third-, or xth-generation scroungers who'll never bother to work for a living while the state pays. There are also a lot of others who used to have jobs until either their employer went bust or the jobs were moved abroad. These people didn't chose unemployment, but had it foisted on them. The jobs they had paid more, for one thing, but the jobs they can get now don't.

I think what I was trying to say was that the ones who would gladly work often find their income would fall below the minimum necessary to keep their mortgage paid and kids fed, because the UK economy has become so used to cheap foreign labour.

I realised the initial post was about illegals. My reply was intended to take into account the wider immigration context.

We're squeezing out illegal immigration at the same time as making the UK a less attractive place for legal migrants. The only people left to do the jobs that need doing will therefore be Brits, who demand higher wages as a result of our higher relative cost of living. To me, this means a lot of businesses will have to scale down or go bust to afford the wage bill.

As to the second point, yes there as plenty of second- ,third-, or xth-generation scroungers who'll never bother to work for a living while the state pays. There are also a lot of others who used to have jobs until either their employer went bust or the jobs were moved abroad. These people didn't chose unemployment, but had it foisted on them. The jobs they had paid more, for one thing, but the jobs they can get now don't.

I think what I was trying to say was that the ones who would gladly work often find their income would fall below the minimum necessary to keep their mortgage paid and kids fed, because the UK economy has become so used to cheap foreign labour.

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So what are they doing about it? Going to college, improving their knowledge and skills, or just looking forlornly at next door's car/house/lifestyle?

So what are they doing about it? Going to college, improving their knowledge and skills, or just looking forlornly at next door's car/house/lifestyle?

msr

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Maybies aye, maybies naw. Maybies they're trying to save up the couple of grand a decent course'll cost them or maybies the dole only just allows them to cover their living expenses with nothing to spare. I know people who do have jobs who still rely on benefits to keep them afloat as their wage is so low. And theirs is not exactly a champagne lifestyle.

Anyway, a couple of million unemployed is too big a population to generalise like that. And the long-term work dodgers have long since been punted onto disability benefits to try and hide the fact they're workshy scroungers.

Edited to add: Training takes time, paying the mortgage has to happen every month. Hands up all those who'd jeopardise their home to improve their future prospects? For the record, I did when I left the Army but I didn't have a family then. I sure as sh*t wouldn't now.

And at the same time, UK is making the legal route much more difficult, complicated and expensive. Where are we going to get our doctors and nurses, or cleaners and strawberry pickers from then?

We've got loads of unemployed who've been priced out of the job market by far cheaper foreign alternatives - without these alternatives, business will either have to take the hit of employing UK subjects, pay the costs of legal immigration or go deeper underground for their cheap illegals. The alternative is go bust, IMHO.

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Other alternatives might be to make fewer profits, pay lower dividents, pay lower salaries to directors, and just be grateful at what you've got away with for the last few years ..

The difficulty for the government is walking the dividing line between, on the one hand, the benefits to the economy overall of illegal immigration and on the other it's social responsibility to improve the lives of their subject people implicit in the reason for their political existence as elected representatives.

Factories that run on illegal sweat-shop labour contribute to the exchequer in business/corporation and other tax set at more reasonable rates than the rest of the EU, and it helps to drive down wages keeping the minium wage at just that - the minimum. The Home Office has always had an ambivalent attitude to immigaration. Talk tough to the public, and do very little behind the scenes, declare immigration amnestys every couple of years to clear the decks.

Business leaders love to scare politicians with the threat of relocating abroad. No individual MP wishes a major factory to close in his own constituency.

It might well be argued by business leaders that draining the pond of cheap labour makes it more profitable for them to relocate abroad. This is a false argument in my view. The EU, as a collective economic trading bloc is Huge. Together, the member states dwarf the economy of the USA. If companies wish to locate abroad, then to which market are they going to sell their goods if this country and the rest of the EU is collectively on the dole because it's manufacturing base is located abroad?

You cannot sell your goods to those who produce them at a dollar a day, nor can you sell your goods to a society living off state support pegged at subsistence level? In short, you have lost your market!

Nice to see but note the sanction on the employer - a written warning! Does this amount to a sanction? Is this an effective deterrent? Or is it simply a fig-leaf?

If he was a private individual who had inadvertently forgotton to pay his car tax or his insurance, the government would have his car crushed! Because he runs a business, he gets a slap on the wrist!

Bill him personally for the cost of detaining, feeding and accommodating and then deporting each of the illegals and their families (that has to be borne by the taxpayer) using the Charging Orders Act Act 1979 to order a sale of his property to meet the costs if he has no other assets and then perhaps employers will get the message!

It makes no difference what representations any of us make, not least because they won't be listened to. If an EU Directive is not implemented by domestic legislation before the deadline specified within the Directive itself or is not sufficiently implemented by domestic legislation then it will have 'direct effect'..i.e. it is enforceable within the UK courts.

In short, we are bound by laws created by institutions over which we have no democratic control.